Wednesday, August 19, 2015

All Star Comics #8

All Star Comics #8 from the Fanboy Library

In my husband’s vast collection of omnibi, I found the first
appearance of Wonder Woman in All Star
Comics Volume 2. All Star Comics #8 began
by introducing Wonder Woman with, “As lovely as Aphrodite – as wise as Athena –
with the speed of Mercury and the strength of Hercules – She is known only as Wonder Woman, but who she is, or whence
she came, nobody knows!”

I was a little worried about what I was going to encounter
since I just read Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948 by Noah Berlatsky, but
it wasn’t as kinky as I thought it would be. Considering that William Marston
wrote the comic under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, readers at the time would
have been oblivious to Marston’s personal life and his beliefs about sexuality
and submission. Without that background information, Wonder Woman isn’t that
bad… if readers disregard everything they know about Greek mythology.